Creating new work under festival pressure

A composer, a choreographer and a theatre-maker reflect on the challenges of creating original work in the context of an international arts festival.
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Publicity image for Fraught Outfit’s The Bacchae. Photo by Pia Johnson.

One of the strengths of any major international arts festival, as Adelaide Festival of Arts’ David Sefton recently observed, is exclusivity.

‘Your point of difference as a festival is to put things on that no-one else has got … There are another good half dozen arts festivals across the continent now, and what we do exclusively is what makes us different,’ Sefton told Arts Hub.

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in 2020. In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association. Most recently, Richard received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts